The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) has published a Briefing on the Legal Entity Identifier (LEI) as part of its efforts to raise industry awareness and facilitate compliance with the LEI requirements under MiFID II ahead of its 3 January 2018 launch.

ESMA expects market participants to take all necessary steps to ensure full compliance with the LEI requirements under MiFID II. Based on its previous experience with EMIR reporting, ESMA urges reporting entities not to delay in addressing this important matter, as advance preparation will help in avoiding backlogs and ensuring that all market participants are ready for the new regime.

The European Banking Authority (EBA) and the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) have published their joint Guidelines to assess the suitability of members of management bodies and key function holders.

The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) has issued today a consultation paper on its draft regulatory technical standards (RTS) regarding the creation of a consolidated tape for non-equity instruments which is required under the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID II). The new MiFID II framework, which covers equity-like and non-equity instruments traded on trading venues, introduces provisions for establishing a central source of post-trade prices or consolidated tape.

ESMA, having already issued its draft RTS on an equity tape, is seeking feedback on its draft RTS for the non-equity tape. In order to create the non-equity tape, trading venues and approved publication arrangements (APAs) will send real-time post-trade data to consolidated tape providers (CTPs), who will consolidate this data in real-time and make the data available to the public.

This consultation paper (CP) seeks stakeholders’ views on the draft Regulatory Technical Standard (RTS) ESMA is required to draft under Article 65(8)(c) of Directive 2014/65/EU with regard to the consolidated tape for non-equity instruments.

The input from stakeholders will help ESMA in finalising this draft RTS. Respondents to the consultations are encouraged to provide the relevant data to support their arguments or proposals.

Contents

Section 2 introduces the topic. Section 3 addresses the issue of specialisation of the CT, whereas section 4 discusses which trading venues and APAs should be mandatorily included in the CT. Finally, the CP ends with section 5 which discusses the inclusion of new trading venues and APAs to the CT as well as the removal of a trading venue or APA from the CT.

Next Steps

On the basis of the responses to this CP, ESMA will finalise the draft RTS and submit the final report to the European Commission for endorsement. The consultation closes on 5 December.